Like wine, books are best enjoyed paired and shared

The Wise Man’s Fear and Redstone Meadery

Honestly, don’t get into a conversation with me about Patrick Rothfuss. My thoughts on the man are fast approaching worship status and I’ll sit you down and have all the conversations about his characterization, world-building, stunning use of names, and methods of creating suspense in his novels.

Let me back up–his two novels. After being at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend, I could easily say that Rothfuss had the largest amount of groupies for anybody that had only written two novels. Of course, “only” is a judgmental word, considering that Harper Lee and Arundhati Roy only wrote one each and those novels far surpass many, many works from other writers.

Rothfuss’ second book, The Wise Man’s Fear, follows the main character, Kvothe, as he makes his way through the University, ferrets out a group of highway bandits, has some sweet sexy time with a member of the Fae, and forces himself into the training grounds of the world’s most skilled mercenaries, the Adem.

The book manages to bring us to so many parts of the world–but the question of how Kvothe ended up as an innkeeper and the mysterious challenges he faces now with his magic are left unanswered. I can’t imagine how Rothfuss will tie up the story with one more book, but he has promised it and so we, the ever patient audience *hah*, must wait to see.

Now, for a pairing endorsed by Rothfuss himself, you must read the novel with a glass of mead at hand. If you’re like Rothfuss (and Mr. BookPairing), you’ll have mead that you’ve crafted yourself, but for the rest of us there are some fine options.

Redstone Meadery is producing some of the most widely distributed meads in the country, with some fantastic choices to read with your Rothfuss. I recently attended a tasting event featuring their mead and the warm, sweet goodness went straight to my head and to my heart (*too much?). They work to create natural meads that don’t contain sulfites and are only lightly pasteurized.

Redstone’s Juniper Mountain Honey Wine is lightly fermented with juniper berries to give another layer of complexity to the already layered blend of Orange and Desert blossom honeys they use to create the mead.

Their Nectar of the Hops is another stunning choice, that has just the slightest hoppy bite at the beginning and ends smooth like mead. It was easily one of the most interesting, and yet amazing, things I’ve had to drink this year.

DO IT! It is supposed to be a trilogy with third and final book slated for sometime in the next two years. If you’re all about reading series together, I’ll allow you to wait for that final one. :D

http://twitter.com/JoannaInBxl Joanna Hennon

I’ve never read anything by him, but I sure do love drinking mead! My husband played in a band that did a lot of medieval and fantasy festivals in the summer so there was always loads of mead to try. Yum!

http://www.bookpairing.com/ Nikki Steele

Yummy! I’ve only recently gotten into mead, but I think once you find quality stuff, it’s quite a joy. I love the options you do get at medieval festivals — it’s still alive there :D